Potentially ‘rent-seeking’ incentives for academics
are essential for the constructive decolonization and redevelopment of South
African universities
Tim Crowe
A recent opinion piece by
Dr Sean Muller focuses on potential negative consequences of ‘incentivization’
that promote “rent seeking behaviour” in university academics. Before I attempt to refute his thesis, it is
necessary to ‘correct’ the author’s restricted definition of rent seeking: “the process by which private entities seek to use
the state’s power to obtain or protect excessive economic surplus” and “compete
for artificially contrived transfers”.
In fact, the idea of rent
seeking:
“is
simple but powerful. People are said to seek rents when they try to obtain
benefits for themselves through the political arena. They typically do so by
getting a subsidy for a good they produce or for being in a particular class of
people, by getting a tariff on a good they produce, or by getting a special
regulation that hampers their competitors”.
This idea, like that of “affirmative
action”, is not inherently ‘wrong’. Both forms of social engineering can help
redress past injustice and promote adaptive change. But, when perverted, both can have negative
effects on university academics. Muller
emphasizes these for alleged “rent seeking” in universities, especially those in post-colonial developing nations. Prof. David
Benatar et al. do the same for
affirmative action.
I also offer some constructive effects of
academic incentivization in a post-liberation South African university
environment.
The push to publish
In South
Africa, since the 1970s, in order to encourage publication of research, universities
receive cash for the publication of the results of its academic research in
‘approved’ journals/books. In some cases,
in the ‘old days’ some or all of this “subsidy” finds its way to the pockets of
academics and/or postgraduate student authors. This is no longer allowed by the SARS. However, generally, it is used ‘wisely’ to
subsidize university-wide processes at the discretion of senior management or
allocated, in part, to the research accounts of academics and/or their
departments. In principle, I see nothing
wrong with this form of incentivization, other than all of the subsidy going
directly to the academic personally. It
encourages academics to conduct research that helps them to remain at the
forefront of their disciplines and, especially, grad students to develop an ethos
of “research is not done until it is reviewed by peers and published”. Yes, some research may be of little or no
value. But its impact is filtered out by peer-reviewers or is simply
ignored. What is important is that
research is a sine qua non for
reputable academics, even those who focus on teaching.
Other forms of incentivization
Two other
performance-related metrics employed in some South African universities to
hire, promote and otherwise reward academics that are the h-index (that aims to describe the productivity and impact of a
researcher via citations) and her/his assessment through the rating system using international peers
administered by South Africa’s National Research Foundation (NRF). Both the merits and deficiencies of these
metrics are reviewed thoroughly by Prof. C.L. ‘Kit” Vaughan in On the Shoulders of Oldenburg
(2015 – NRF, Pretoria - ISBN: 978-1-86868-111-2). I strongly support the use of NRF rating as a
means of incentivization because it assesses research ‘quality’ by
knowledgeable peers (and not ‘popularity’) every four years and has special
awards for brilliant young researchers.
Periodic review by peers is an excellent means of exposing the fraud, plagiarism, rigging and unethical arrangements
referred to by Muller.
‘World rankings’ and ‘social importance’
The ‘relational’
problem of university world rankings for academics is clearly addressed by the
NRF system that delineates applicants from “A” (world leaders) to “C” (established
researchers) in comparison with the best-of-the-best. Young researchers are ranked “Y” (good but
need development) and “P” (President’s Award = world class). There is even a category “L” for
late-developing academics (e.g. women who dedicated their early years to
raising children). Yes, many
institutional ‘world’ rankings are “relative rather than [measuring] absolute
quality” and focus on questionable metrics such as the number of Nobel
laureates. But, this neglects
mentioning the Center for World University Rankings which ranks university research by discipline and gives absolute
scores. [For example, for ornithology, my discipline, the University of Cape
Town ranks – at 90.22 - third in the world, six points behind the USA’s Cornell
University.] So, “it’s [not] a zero-sum
game”.
With regard
to an academic’s or a university’s “social importance”, the “quality of
teaching” and development of “high calibre academics for the future” can be
assessed using course assessments by students, institutional recognition with
Distinguish Teaching Awards and monitoring the success of postgraduates - what
I call “academic fitness” (the number and percentage of supervised graduates
who have successful careers). [For
example, all of my 55 postgrads found relevant employment and 15 as professors
or institutional directors - 15 women and 10 ‘blacks’.] Locally relevant
research is also easily determined from examination of publication abstracts/summaries.
Vulnerability of ‘weak’ or ‘decolonizing’
institutions
If anything,
the use of potentially ‘rent seeking’ incentives based on the various metrics
discussed above should help to improve the ‘status’ and ‘relevance’ of
academics and institutions. Kit Vaughan
documents this well for formerly Afrikaans-medium universities which increased markedly
in world rankings after the introduction of the NRF Rating System. With regard to decolonization, rent-seeking
structures could be introduced that favour academics and departments who
improve in their “academic fitness” with special regard to socio-economically
oppressed students. They also could be
used to identify weak and potentially racist academics who could be counselled
or even retrenched. In Muller’s terms, “Academics
who are not equipped to produce and publish work that makes a substantive
contribution – intellectual or other” should be encouraged to develop, not
rewarded.
Of course,
such assessments and comparisons should, at least initially, be restricted to
within universities. Initially, they
could help to identify and promote strong individuals and departments. The
ultimate goal is to have all universities competing at the same level.
But, you
have got to start somewhere to identify strengths, weaknesses and
opportunities.
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